A Wordle View of Computers in Libraries 2009

So, I’m back at home while the Computers in Libraries 2009 conference is wrapping up. On the flight home, I got to thinking about major themes and it struck me that there might be a way to represent the themes visually. Enter wordle. If you aren’t familiar with wordle, you can paste source text or even pass URLs of feeds to a simple web form and get a “wordcloud” of major terms. I thought I might try pasting the Computers in Libraries 2009 program text into wordle. Here’s the wordle representation of cil2009. (I removed some basic noise words like keynote, track A, 11:30, etc.)

(click on thumbnail for full image)

Not surprising to see “Library”, “Libraries”, “Search” and “Social” as some top terms. But, I am glad to see the terms around the edges making some headway. Terms like “mobile”, “development”, and “innovative” suggest that the profession is moving forward. One missing term that I’m hearing more and more is “embed” or embedding”. I think it’s an important concept and starts to get at a new mode of library services: embedded library instruction, embedded reference services, embedded library web services in the form of widgets and gadgets, etc. Just my thoughts from a cursory scanning… If you have other thoughts about the cil2009 wordcloud, feel free to leave a comment.